Cartridge systems that contain a particular payload to be launched constitute extremely practical constructions for deploying almost any material or projectile downrange. Typical cartridge systems incorporate the desired payload, a propellant, and some priming composition all within a self-contained unit. While ammunition cartridges are prototypical of cartridge devices, useful cartridge systems have been designed to launch other payloads, such as chemical, pyrotechnic, marker, tracer, signaling, non-lethal projectiles, explosive, smoke, and other payloads such as anti-personnel, to exploit their specific functions.
Most cartridge systems require specialized launching devices that are designed for use with that particular cartridge, for example, 37 mm and 40 mm munitions launchers are commonly used for dispatching payloads such as rubber balls or chemical munitions. Even though these launchers use cartridges that are substantially larger than modern shotshell cartridges, their payload capacity is still limited. Moreover, simple design principles suggest that further increasing launcher and cartridge diameter to increase payload capacity has a practical upper limit, beyond which increased recoil would effectively prohibit using the high capacity launchers in a handheld or shoulder mounted configuration.
These features can be important factors in the decision to carry such launchers into hazardous situations, where it is usually extremely difficult to bring traditional tools into action. For example, extremely dangerous combat or battlefield situations, law enforcement operations, and riots, constitute dangerous environments in which portability and ease of operation of a chemical, fire suppression, signaling, and related cartridges and launchers may be important. Moreover, hand carried launching devices and their cartridges are limited in size due to one's ability to handle recoil, thereby limiting the overall amount of any particular payload that can be safely and accurately deployed.
Therefore, it would be helpful to discover and develop new launchers and systems for discharging payloads such as chemical payloads, powders, gels and the like, toward downrange targets, even at relatively long ranges. Launcher systems that could dispatch large weight and large volume payloads without the shooter experiencing excessive recoil due the payload size would be particularly desirable. Such a system would be very useful if it could be carried by an individual, readily deployed under combat or riot conditions, and fired in handheld or shoulder mounted configurations, because it incorporates some means of managing or attenuating recoil when launching a payload downrange.